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Rule By Sociopath

In the modern vernacular, the sociopath is someone who lacks empathy, remorse and an understanding of right and wrong. The sociopath sees no difference between the truth and a lie, only their utility. Additionally, they never think about the consequences of their actions. A sociopath sees no harm in telling people that his brain juice will prevent concussions. The veracity of his statements are meaningless. What matters is how well it moves product. People ending up with brain damage as a result is never considered.

The key thing about the modern sociopath is the ambivalence toward the truth. They think saying something is the same as doing something. What matters is if the words get the listener to do what the sociopath wants them to do. Standing in front of crowd, making false claims, is fine if it causes people to buy product. If the truth sells more product, then the truth is better. From the perspective of the modern sociopath, the difference is about the results, not the accuracy of the statements. The truth or a lie, whichever works.

Now replace “sociopath” with “politician” and “product” with “votes” and you have the modern managerial democracy. It’s not that our politicians lie. It’s that for them, a lie is indistinguishable from the truth. That’s why they seem so utterly shameless. Shame requires a sense of right and wrong, a knowledge that what you said or did is intrinsically wrong. For the people who rule over us, right and wrong only exist in the context of their own ambitions. Something is “right” if it benefits the person in the moment.

On Jan. 31, the mayor here, Megan Barry, called a news conference to announce that she had been having an affair with Robert Forrest Jr., a police sergeant who was the head of her security detail: “It was wrong, and we shouldn’t have done it,” she said.

Along with this confession, the mayor offered the kind of full-throated apology we almost never get from public officials: “I accept full responsibility for the pain I have caused my family and his,” she said. “I knew my actions could cause damage to my office and the ones I loved, but I did it anyway.”

She ended her statement with a pledge: “God will forgive me, but the people of Nashville don’t have to. In the weeks and months to come, I will work hard to earn your forgiveness and earn back your trust.”

This promise did not seem like an act of damage control. This is the way Megan Barry really talks. The language of full emotional availability is her native tongue.

Perhaps that’s why this city loves her. She hugs schoolchildren. She looks genuinely joyful at city parades and festivals. She grieves that too many Nashville teenagers are slain by guns. When Max Barry, her own son and only child, died suddenly last summer, the people of Nashville wept with her. When she spoke openly about the drug addiction that killed him, we marveled at her courage and admired her resolve to bring addiction out of the shadows of shame.

But in a red state like Tennessee, this liberal mayor also has powerful opponents, and they are not idiots. An editorial in the conservative Tennessee Star wasted no time in calling for her resignation: “Barry and the fawning, liberal Nashville media are trying the Clinton defense.”

Notice that saying you are taking responsibility is now the same as actually taking responsibility. The normal way in which one would seek forgiveness is to confess, demonstrate contrition and atone for the crime. In other words, usually you suffer for having done wrong. It is the willingness to accept punishment that demonstrates your acceptance of right and wrong. What we have here is a soulless effort to turn bad behavior into a political asset by fooling people about her contrition.

This sort of thing has become a feature of the managerial class, as it has become increasingly feminized. The writer of that Times piece is a typical feminist, lacking anything resembling a rational mind. That’s why she celebrates Mayor Sociopath. The great writer Theodore Dalrymple touches on this in his last Taki piece. In a world of emasculated liars, lying becomes the most noble of qualities. That means everyone is now trained to lie about themselves and their intentions. Mendacity is the coin of the managerial realm.

There is another aspect to it. The Mayor is out there performing a one women play intended to let you know how she feels about herself. The expectation is the voters will reward her for being able to tell them how she feels about her own lack of moral scruples. It is a deranged form a solipsism, where all that matters is how one feels about one’s own mind. It’s why the expression, “I feel” turns up in so much of our public discourse. Truth is defined by how one feels about it at any one moment in time.

As Theodore Dalrymple pointed out, the meritocracy has been warped by this self-absorption, so this habit of mind is being forced onto the younger generations. If you want to get into a good school, you better be good at expressing how you feel about it, in a way that lets the admissions people know you really care. Listen to millennial males talk and it often sounds like girl’s night after one of the coven had a fight with her boyfriend. They endlessly yammer on about how they feel and demand a reward for their good intentions.

I’ve often pointed out that the arrival of women in positions of authority is the death knell of the organization. It means the smart money has moved onto greener pastures, leaving the enterprise to the vultures, who will pick over the corpse for the bits they like. Feminists will get their stuff, homosexuals will make their demands, minorities will air their grievances. In time, the organization collapses under the weight of its own absurdity. That’s what’s happening in the West. It’s a scramble to strip the carcass of civilization.

This pretty much underpins a lot of corporate management. If a manager’s course of action results in the advancement of a task or the furthering of the company’s interests, it is because it also happened to serve his own purpose, and for no other reason. You meet a lot of sociopaths in the modern corporation.

The most successful can wade through the BS and recognize it for what it is. It’s wise to assume you are a pawn and hopefully for them a resounding drone of the institution, whether it be political or corporate, they play the same game, hoping you’ll buy what their selling, drink the kool-aid and not think for yourself. Morals or the lack of them are no longer important because we believe what we’re told by the media and the institution. By taking a position that something is wrong and that there should be a consequence is considered insensitive and offensive… Read more »

My take on corporate injustice? This may sound a bit silly but this is my take regardless of how dumb the analogy is, I work in it everyday and have the right to an opinion. The end is to know how to play the game. Someone once told me, (I think it was my Dad) that nobody is out to put a dollar in your pocket but a lot of people are there to take one out of it. The big corporations for the most part don’t care about you or your family, you are a mule that pulls the… Read more »

Part of the problem is that women among themselves only know rank by seniority. Which is why woman hierarchies are usually pretty flat. Hence they atone among themselves by confessions. However in contrast to men, woman never forget-and-forgive.

The behaviour exposed by the Mayor is fully normal in woman’s circles. However that is not where she is, she is at the top of a local hierarchy which demands other behaviour.

I am increasingly of the opinion that women cannot adopt to the male dominance hierarchy, and consequently should have no place in commanding positions.

INMO there is no way in hell that sociopaths do not “understand” the difference betwixt right and wrong; they certainly do. They just do not give a shit. For them, the ends justifies the means. How weird is it that criminal nut jobs who are declared clinically insane have the intellectual wherewithal to carefully plan out – over extended periods of time – how they will perpetrate some heinous act. Then we are to believe that he “did not know what he was doing.” Sure. I read some terrifying articles about child sociopaths- some as young as 5 years of… Read more »

Libraries have been filled with books about sociopath/psychopath distinctions. In my meager uneducated forays into the subject, a few common statements seem to occur frequently ;
About 4 % of a population will be sociopathic_
About 1% of a population will be psychopathic_
The sociopathic personality can be confidently diagnosed after the age of 18_
The psychopathic personality cannot be diagnosed after the age of 15_ this because they have become wise to themselves and can effectively lie and obscure their inner monster.
They share similar traits.
The difference between the two- one will kill you.

Equilibrium will be restored, in the fullness of time. I want all these pozzed companies and institutions to fail; their removal makes room for the new world being built. Let the monkey brained crooks strip the carcass, they won’t be getting anything worth having.

“This will not end well”. You mean it’s going to get worse? Yeah, accepting responsibility for ones actions usually meant stepping down, a reduction in rank, some penalty. It’s become a trope. Good choice on Dalrymple quote, he has some memorable ones especially from one of his recent Taki columns “You have to be egotistically prepared to stab people in the back in the scramble for advancement, while at the same time being prepared to suppress your own personality by uttering other people’s clichés at the expense of your own thoughts. Unpreparedness to do this, either through lack of training… Read more »

While there are potentially interesting points of discussion, both in your post and Dalrymple’s, I don’t think that Barry’s infidelity is a good example. Taking responsibility for that, and atoning for it, isn’t between her and the electorate, it’s between her and her family. Most people have enough of their own problems to really want to give it a lot of thought. Adultery is hardly new. On the other hand, the question of all the overtime paid to her lover is a real question. As for the emotional reaction to Barry’s persona, how many times have I heard nonsense about… Read more »

The sociopaths have a new problem, and that is that their statements can be checked for accuracy and are saved forever. Senator Warren is learning about that right now.

Their best response is to just deny it all and try to scoop enough public support to defend their denial. It is unfortunate that people have been trained to defend any crazy idea that coincides with their world view, even though, deep down, they must know that it is all fake and a phony facade.

Sometime between William Shakespeare’s “all the world’s a stage” and our Hollywood aristocracy the common man internalized the persona of an actor.

Men no longer became what they did but rather what they could convince themselves (because that’s how you convince others) that they are. This suited Darwinian natural selection well because women are suckers for appearances.

And so today, when babies are born the first thig they learn to do is lie, and the first person they learn to lie to is themselves. We’re all actors now.

The latest iteration of the mind-cancelling insanity is the ‘children’s crusade’ now upon us; it is a militarization of school kids, and ‘it will not end well’. The pressure is on the President and on the governor of Florida – conveniently both Republicans – and the media are naturally pushing the meme, and hard. It’s all I’ve heard about for two days. It’s not even a question of denial, or having a world view. It’s pure mind control; the technique was worked out in the Chinese Cultural Revolution – when young people throughout urbanized China rejected adult authority, left schools,… Read more »

Ever watch Paw Patrol? Whole episodes on YouTube. My grandkids love it. The mayor of the town is a darkie woman who is a complete ditz and the pups have to solve all of her problems for her.

It’s as though the people who make it are aware of the training the millennials get, anticipated the environment that would create, and are preparing toddlers to cope with that environment when the time comes and they have to rescue their own communities from the madness.

Doc;
My grandkids too. I actually saw where some some Prog commenter or other recently pronounced that it was ‘fascist’. It was one of those, ‘I had no idea how much I liked it before I heard this’ moments for me.

“I’ve often pointed out that the arrival of women in positions of authority is the death knell of the organization.” Yup, and again John Glubb agrees: “An increase in the influence of women in public life has often been associated with national decline. The later Romans complained that, although Rome ruled the world, women ruled Rome. In the tenth century, a similar tendency was observable in the Arab Empire, the women demanding admission to the professions hitherto monopolised by men.” In the Arab Empire mentioned above, this happened: “Soon after this period, government and public order collapsed, and foreign invaders… Read more »

Try to imagine China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, or Israel being led by a woman. Not gonna happen. Why? Because raw power aggressively exercised is the rule in all of those places. There is no room for “feelings”.

I know she was hawt and all, but I really don’t think she hesitated using the hammer. Old School and a pretty damn good leader from anything I’ve happened to read.
Hillary!, on the other hand… When a woman starts disregarding her own appearance beware, there’s no meaner or more twisted than those hag creatures. Janet Reno on roids, we would have had a Waco a week and two on second Thursdays.

Bill Clinton was a well known philanderer. And if the stories are true – then Hillary went after the women he screwed around with – but obviously didn’t dump his ass. This is a pattern I’ve seen before with women who stick with adulterers. They’re pissed – but they just can’t seem to bring themselves to be so pissed off at their husbands that they take out all the rage on them. So the rage gets taken out on the women that the husband sleeps with. At the time of his Presidency – the media at least portrayed it as… Read more »

Yup, also Margaret Thatcher in the UK and Indira Gandhi in India. But to Al from da Nort’s post directly below, they governed like men (raw power wielded aggressively) rather than in the softer “feelings” mode. Though many of these countries have a rather opaque line of governmental succession, it does not appear, for the most part, either culturally or by any reference to any specific person, that there are any women waiting in the wings to assume power. There is Kim Jong Un’s sister, but I suspect that either he or she will end up as anti-aircraft gun fodder… Read more »

Isabella of Spain is one of the most extraordinary monarchs of all time, but her society was highly masculine to put it mildly and she deferred to her husband publicly and privately despite the fact that she was far more capable than him. She was successful because of the nature of her society. If she lived in our absurd matriarchy no one would have heard of her.

That right there answers exactly why we have so many of these problems. Instead of saying “just give it to them shut them the fuck up” – we should have been saying ” No – you’re not getting that – now just shut the fuck up” Note that your statement is “just GIVE it to them” – which is welfare in action. What I have noticed at lot over the last couple of decades is there are a lot of people who will say they DID something – when in fact they have done nothing. If we can’t even get… Read more »

This is a side-matter, but it is exactly why “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” isn’t quite the feminist propaganda film people wanted to make it out to be. The writers/director took great joy in putting those war mongering men in their place. And then everybody died and the two dozen or so remnants of the Rebellion crawled onto the Millenium Falcon. It’s kind of fascinating in the sense that even the writers either subconsciously or consciously understood what they had done. Based on what has been written, I don’t think they intended it. Kinda like George Lucas’ films where he… Read more »

Z Man; “…the arrival of women in positions of authority is the death knell of the organization.” That’s been my observation, too, recently. But I beg to differ slightly. There have always been women who can function well in positions of authority. But they were relatively few in number because they had to (mostly) function like the men in the organization and follow that organization’s rules, formal and informal. Those rules were male oriented and optimized on external measurement, not on internal adjustment to ‘feelings’.* The situation now is that the old, general rules have been bent to optimize for… Read more »

Everywhere you look, it appears that the ship is sinking faster, and the despair can become paralyzing if you continually focus on the negative. Yes, the sociopaths are multiplying like rabbits and leading us to damnation, but we are not powerless and there are still more than a few sane citizens hiding in the weeds. There are tangible things that we can do to make a difference, and it’s not limited to eloquent criticism.

The problem is that those who represent powerful constituencies, who clearly understand who they are and how to take advantage of the situation, lie in wait to pick the bones of our societal carcass. They are political nation-states, such as China or Russia, or religious and cultural movements, such as Muslims or Blacks. They understand where their interests lie, subsume their more parochial personal interests to the larger movement, and have no compunction about seizing the opportunities presented to them. We are busy arguing points of order and our differing perceived realities amongst ourselves, while those who have the numbers… Read more »

Nor am I. There is much that can be done to aid in the course change. Trump is an example, but he is rare and there is only one of him. The battle will be waged on many fronts. Zman and his ilk are leading the information campaign. Others will spearhead other tactics according to their talents.

In my professional life I’ve seen a bit of a distinction when it comes to management vs business competence. This post points out how once a company has women proceeding up the management chain and getting into positions of substantial authority, it’s downhill for the business from there. I think that’s probably right. But then I got thinking about one of the consultants my firm works with. They produce medical summaries and for lack of a better word ghostwrite expert reports for us. The head of the company is one of the most fantastically competent people I’ve ever worked with.… Read more »

“I’ve often pointed out that the arrival of women in positions of authority is the death knell of the organization. . . In time, the organization collapses under the weight of its own absurdity. That’s what’s happening in the West. It’s a scramble to strip the carcass of civilization.”

Good call pointing that out. You’re usually the first site I get around to reading in the morning, and some mornings it is a melancholy thing to contemplate.

I think it is no coincidence that female suffrage all over the Western world was also the beginning of terminal cultural and political decline. Economic decline has not followed suit yet but that must be a lagging indicator.

Not exactly. It ends with the demise of the welfare state which is the engine and threat behind feminism and multicult. Feminism and associated ills all stem from the rise of the welfare state. Look if it was just women being harpies it wouldn’t have come to this. It’s come to this because they have the state behind them. They complain and cops come a running. The fact is the welfare state along with the managerial class buying into this culture of death has caused the demise of the West as we now know it. The West can still be… Read more »

“I’ve often pointed out that the arrival of women in positions of authority is the death knell of the organization.”

Couldn’t agree more. Anyone who’s spent any time around women knows that they care more about the tone of what is said than about the underlying truth. You can tell a woman lies all day long if you say them with the right voice. State the truth with the wrong tone and it will be rejected out of hand.

Czeslaw Milosz identified a type of “ketman” among intellectuals in communist countries, in which lying becomes a good in itself. For certain personalities, he says, the only way to stay sane in a society full of lies is to become the best liar of them all. They lie to everyone, always, even if there’s no possible benefit (or even actual harm) to lying. (I see this myself all the time among students from Communist China. They make it a point of pride to put one over on the round-eye every time they can, even when it would take a lot… Read more »

Someone back in the 90’s remarked about the Clintons, “They lie even when the truth would serve them best.”

It is an odd thing, because it contradicts logic. There’s some thrill to it that makes it work. I knew a guy who was a kleptomaniac. He would steal useless office item from people. He would swipe a stapler from a client for no reason other than he enjoyed it. He had a trunk full of stuff he stole. It was like his trophy case.

“women in positions of authority is the death knell of the organization” = SWEDEN and GERMANY?
“Queen” of [fem] sociopaths = the grifting, murdering, shape-shifting, sulphur-breath, tail dragging Hilda-Beast, bar none.

What matters is if the words get the listener to do what the sociopath wants them to do. Standing in front of crowd, making false claims, is fine if it causes people to buy product. If the truth sells more product, then the truth is better. From the perspective of the modern sociopath, the difference is about the results, not the accuracy of the statements. The truth or a lie, whichever works.

I just learned that friends of mine of a couple of decades, the women were pregnant in the same month with our sons so the families have grown up together, are getting separated.
The idiot guy had had an affair.
They entered marriage counseling, where it “arose” that this wasn’t his first straying.

The family is now destroyed with no hope of reconciliation.

The Counselor, of course was a women.Why men speak to these people other than “bring me beer” is a mystery.

A proper apology starts with admitting guilt and ends with an act of penance. “I’m sorry for what I did, and here is what I am going to do in order to make it right.” A proper apology never tells the other person they have to choose to do something. A proper apology is 100% owned by the person doing the apology. In this case, she should just resign and leave public life. That’s 90% of the problem we have in the Federal Government where people give half or thirds of apologies, usually along the lines of “I’m sorry you… Read more »

Here is an article that complains about how the company Meetup, which made a big deal about how inclusive and caring they were, was being acquired by big mean WeWork and thus changing its corporate culture.

Ignore the article but flip through the embedded slides from the Meetup presentation and notice how the “Past” differs from the “Now”.

The USA is pretty much lost. I can not see a path back to anything resembling normalcy as we knew it in, say, 1965. I suspect that the breaking apart of the union will be the only way we can survive — but even that does not guarantee good things.

No joke. Wait until the economy goes t’s up, or until our modern military gets a black eye from a peer military….as nasty as things are now, it will get viciously mean. I live in the boondocks thank god. As for Zman, I think he ought to team up with Ol’ Remus and get the hell out of Lagos. Tim

we just spent an hour going over my 16 year old’s grades.He’s improved well since threatened with no drivers license.
We had little vignettes for each subject.
In English, The question was
Teacher:
“What is the purpose of irony.?”
The Boy:
“Well,if you really have to ask…..”

Several years ago, while on a long bicycle day ride with a co-worker who just happened to be the Mayor of the small city in which I reside and his fellow councilman, I told them I had read the results of a long term study which had determined that the only real difference between psychopaths and politicians was that psychopaths killed people and tended to keep memetos of the act. The Mayor laughed. The councilman said ” That’s not funny.”

I’m surprised no one has hit on the greatest meaningless “I take full responsibility” act ever–Janet Waco. A Japanese could be relied upon to commit suicide with a knife across his intestines. And if I recall correctly, Ike wrote two letters directly prior to launching D-Day, the second of which was his resignation. It is impossible now to imagine a single Democrat who would have resigned in the circumstances Richard Nixon found himself. Of course, a Democrat never would have found himself in those circumstances. Hillary and a cast of thousands were counting on that. Still are.

I think we lost this battle when we embraced the Kennedys. As a kid in Roman Catholic schools the received narrative was, “Those blue-blood establishment types and Southern Baptists said the Kennedys would act like a bunch of drunken Irish gangsters and we sure proved them wrong! Yay, Catholics!” Except that the Kennedys did act like a bunch of drunken Irish gangsters. And after Teddy drowned that girl, there was no excuse for anyone to believe otherwise. A significant chunk of this nation chose tribalism over their American identity. I think there is still an opportunity get back on track,… Read more »

Just a nitpick here…but you kinda glossed over the sociopath’s first two traits: lacking empathy and lacking remorse. A true sociopath will feel none of those for ANYONE…including family, children and closest loved ones. Insofar as a sociopath is psychologically “broken” and unable to function normally, the example you give of someone hawking “brain juice” is a bit worse. He is living in a post-truth society. He will say whatever he can to make money. If someone close to him suffers because of his words or actions, he feels grief. Otherwise, he doesn’t really care. We are not necessarily ruled… Read more »

I believe that we can trace the beginnings of our decline to the time that women were allowed to vote. Women nurture, and nurturing is not an effective technique to respond in a world of cutthroats. I cannot count the number of times my wife has asked me: How did you now his/her intentions were evil? I often use this line of argument on died in the wool feminists that are rude or dogmatic: it is fun to see them turn into a spitting mad tempest. But, it is the best explanation I can muster.

Reminds of this great quote from Isaiah Berlin – (“Apotheosis of the Romantic Will”): “no one today is surprised by the assumption that . . . integrity and sincerity are admirable independently of the truth of the beliefs or the principles involved . . . Yet this has not long been so . . . what Catholic in, let us say, the sixteenth century would say, ‘I abhor the heresies of the Reformers, but I am deeply moved by the sincerity and integrity with which they hold and practice and sacrifice themselves for their abominable beliefs’? On the contrary, the… Read more »

[…] The key thing about the modern sociopath is the ambivalence toward the truth. They think saying something is the same as doing something. What matters is if the words get the listener to do what the sociopath wants them to do. Standing in front of crowd, making false claims, is fine if it causes people to buy product. If the truth sells more product, then the truth is better. From the perspective of the modern sociopath, the difference is about the results, not the accuracy of the statements. The truth or a lie, whichever works. […]